


Box Turtle Lane - Halloween Special

by floralstiel



Series: Box Turtle Lane [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Domestic, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Fluff, Halloween, M/M, Sastiel - Freeform, Witchcraft, but not the bad kind
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-01
Updated: 2014-11-01
Packaged: 2018-02-23 11:08:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2545340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/floralstiel/pseuds/floralstiel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Halloween has come at last, and despite popular belief it's not exactly Cas's favorite holiday. But Sam has a plan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Box Turtle Lane - Halloween Special

That time of the year had come around at last; the time of chilling winds, piles of russet leaves, and the all-important holiday no one can forget: Halloween. Of course, it’s one that Castiel would love to be rid of. As much as he adored the residents of his quaint little town, they enjoyed reminding him that yes, he was a witch, and yes, it was, in fact, Halloween. Witches have everything to do with Halloween, don’t they?

No, as a matter of fact they don’t.

Castiel imagined himself a patient man, really, it was in his nature. Halloween, however, tested his patience _severely_.

“So, you putting up any nice decorations this Halloween? Or what do your people call it, All Hallows’ Eve? Make sure they’re not too scary, wouldn’t want to frighten the children. I don’t know what’s _normal_ for you people.”

“Don’t your kind celebrate that Sam-Hane thing, or however it’s pronounced?”

“Oh I _do_ hope you’ll perform some magic for all the little ones that come to your door, it’s important for them to see the diversity in their community and learn about your folk and all of that.”

“Yes, of course,” Castiel answered all their questions and comments with a smile, resisting the urge to shut his door harder than necessary. Broom jittered in the corner behind the door and Castiel smiled ruefully, walking away to the kitchen, Broom following a few feet behind, unusually subdued. If a sentient piece of wood with a head of straw could tell he was down, what was the townspeople’s excuse?

The house groaned around him and he slumped down the hall, eyeing the creaking wood cautiously. He had to be in better control than this. Come Halloween, if he didn’t fix his attitude, who knew what would happen?

“Hey, Cas? You in?”

Sam frowned and stepped into the house, making sure to wipe his feet. The place seemed…darker than usual. Where sunlight used to stream in through every corner of the hall, now there were only shadows and spare blocks of sun from windows. It looked normal, to say the least, which was definitely out of the ordinary for Castiel’s house. He placed his keys on the table in the foyer and hung his coat. Not even Broom came to greet him as he continued further inside. It was like a bizarro version of the normally sunny and cheerful house, he shivered and set the bags of takeout on the kitchen table.

It was late October but not all that chilly yet, though Dean told him in a suspiciously solemn tone that _winter was coming_ , and Sam got the feeling he was missing some sort of reference. October or not, it didn’t explain the chill that crept up his spine when he stepped further into the house. The outside of the house had also been suspiciously dark, even the lanterns hadn’t attempted to sputter to life for him when he rode up to the front gate on his bike. He knew Cas’s feelings about Halloween, but this was pushing it.

“Hello? Cas?”

Sam thought he heard a muffled grumble from upstairs, and he glanced up in time to spot Broom sulking down the hallway, clattering softly against the bannister. If Broom wasn’t even being its usual impish self, something was wrong.

“Cas!” Sam vaulted up the stairs, two at a time, fearing the worst. “I knew we shouldn’t have eaten that bread last night, I know you said it was fine but I swear if you’re up here puking…” At least Sam hoped he was puking, he’d rather handle a sick witch than anything…worse. As a matter of fact he’d never seen Cas sick before, he didn’t really know what to expect. He entered the master bedroom as soon as a pillow weakly flopped against the wall by his head. He tried not to laugh at all the bedroom things wallowing around on the ground, twirling in pathetic circles or rolling and rippling along like the blanket attempting to escape from the lump of others on the bed. Sam carefully stepped around a rather sorry looking pair of tassel pillows and sat on the edge of the bed.

“Have they arrived?” Cas grunted from under his pile.

“They?”

“Them…the _solicitors_ ,” Cas shifted and his head peeked out from the bottom of the pile, “the children in false garb. Make them leave.”

“No one’s here, Cas, it isn’t Halloween yet.” Sam smiled, trying not to laugh. He’d laughed at Cas before when he’d been in one of his moods, it took him weeks to grow his eyebrows back, he’d learned his lesson well.

“Damn,” Cas scowled, uncharacteristically foul, “I was quite certain it was.”

“How long have you been up here?” Sam was almost afraid to ask, but the dark circles under Cas’s usually vibrant eyes were telling enough.

Cas hummed roughly and counted on his fingers for a moment and Sam rolled his eyes, standing and taking the majority of the blanket pile with him.

“Come on, at least come downstairs and quit moping, you have a few more days.”

“But what if they come early?”

“They won’t.”

Sam didn’t need to look to know that Cas was following him down the stairs, Broom clattered ahead of them with its usual amount of exuberance, perking up again at the sight of its master, but the last remaining dregs of light were sucked from the walls the further down they went.

“Quit moping or you’ll _really_ scare some kids.”

“What if that’s what I want?” Cas asked petulantly, stopping to water a rather lonely growth of lilac in the corner.

“You and I both know that’s not true.”

Cas grumbled and griped some more and sat at the kitchen table, patiently waiting while Sam got out some plates and served their dinner. A blanket ruffled down the stairs and alighted on his shoulders and he grabbed at it and cocooned himself in his chair.

“Chinese again,” Sam said apologetically, “things are slow at the lab and it’s getting harder to pick up extra shifts.”

“I should have cooked something,” Cas said miserably, practically shriveling up like a prune in the sun. Sam could only shake his head and smile.

“With the state you’re in there’s no telling what would end up happening if you stepped foot in this kitchen with the intent to cook.”

Cas hummed noncommittally and Sam could tell it was still bothering him. He pushed his vegetables around on his plate, mixing it with his tofu and rice, not eating a bite.

“C’mon,” Sam sighed, “at least eat your dinner.”

“I’m sorry I’m just…I don’t know, I’m not my usual self…”

“I can tell.”

Cas quirked an eyebrow and Sam knew he was treading on thin ice. At least in the light Cas didn’t look so awful, the bags under his eyes weren’t nearly as bad as he thought they were and at least he still had some color in his cheeks, if he’d started to get sick on top of all the rest of this nonsense Sam wouldn’t know what to do with himself.

“You wanna just come over to Dean’s place on Halloween? Kids barely show up at the apartments, especially his,” Sam said. Cas looked like he was considering it but one furtive glance out the window was all it took for him to sink back down in his chair.

“If I leave they win.”

Now Sam really couldn’t help but laugh.

“It’s not funny!” Cas blustered, skewering a piece of tofu and chewing it angrily, “these…these buffoons think they can order me around like some trained monkey! ‘Oh Castiel won’t you be a dear and do some magic tricks for the children, hmmmmyes wouldn’t that be lovely!’” He crooned in a mock falsetto, no doubt imitating one of the mothers on the street. Sam had never seen him this riled up, and he couldn’t stop laughing. He knew he was well on his way to another set of singed eyebrows but he couldn’t stop, not with that pathetic frowning face glaring at him from across the table.

“Sam, please,” Cas said around a mouthful of broccoli, trying to hold back a smile but wasn’t being all that convincing, “if I turn tail then they’ll have won. I know quite a few people here think the whole witchcraft thing is poppycock, and they’re just dying to disprove me.”

“And you think that they’re going to try and do that on Halloween? Out of any other day they could try I think that would be the worst one. Anyone with a touch for pyrotechnics or even a few bucks in the joke shop could pull off ‘witchcraft’ on Halloween.”

Cas groaned and slouched further, if that was at all possible, in his chair.

“I think I understand though,” Sam hedged. Their plates rattled menacingly on the table and Sam held his down. “Not them, you. I understand what you’re feeling, sorta. I mean I can’t really know 100% what you’re feeling, I’m not a witch, but I sure as heck wouldn’t like it if someone came around my place and demanded I perform scientific experiments for them whenever they wanted.”

“It’s not nice to be constantly tested, to be doubted,” Cas added.

“Exactly, and its wrong of them to treat you like this, I know that, but shutting yourself in and moping isn’t the answer.”

“And what is?” Cas challenged.

“Well,” Sam shrugged, “you can show them some magic, but that doesn’t mean they have to see it, does it?”

Cas smiled.

 

The young children on Box Turtle Lane didn’t particularly feel like going up to the witch’s house. Normally the guy kept it clean and tidy and bright and all the other positive adjectives they could think of with their 4th grade vocabulary, but on Halloween the house was, to put it simply, spooky. Not in a B-grade horror movie kind of way, or even what Mrs. Smith down the street thought was spooky, with fake skeletons and cheery carved pumpkins on her porch, no, this was something else entirely.

First of all it was a full moon night, the ground was lit up as if the place had street lamps every few feet, but the closer you got to the witch’s house the darker it got. It was as if the innocent looking, white-boarded building was sucking the light out of everything. They were a little disappointed because last year he gave out the best treats and was super nice to all the kids and parents, even though he didn’t really look like he was enjoying himself.

He was one of those guys who over-decorated for holidays, but not in a macho I’m-going-to-beat-every-guy-on-the-block-with-my-superior-decorations way. The kids could tell he did it for the fun of it, and they all decided that Christmas was his favorite holiday based on what they’d seen so far. They were thinking about changing their minds though, with what they saw in his front yard this Halloween night. It was nothing like last year.

Last year he had cute genuine carved pumpkins that he made all himself with real candles inside them, real stalks of corn with actual live corn on them—like wow, that’s the best you can get outside of a corn maze an hour and a half from town—and he had homemade candies he gave out by the handful along with mini pumpkins. Each kid got their own pumpkin and that was even better than the corn, seriously. It’s like once they hit his house they didn’t really feel like finishing the street, they just wanted to go home and eat all his delicious candy and slip into a sugar coma.

This year though, just by looking at the front gate, it was immediately obvious that things were different. A dank fog had settled all around the house, and kids knew what fog machine smoke smelled like, and this wasn’t it. It clung to their shoes and costumes like spider webs and some of the younger ones started mumbling worriedly. Sickly green lights bobbed around in the lawn in front of the house, but they couldn’t tell what was making the light. There wasn’t a single pumpkin in sight save for a few large gnarly ones situated by the front of the steps, uncarved and unlit, and somehow that made them creepier. The odd thing about it was you couldn’t see the house at all. They had the impression that it was there, they could tell, but the place was just so dark—unnaturally so—that they couldn’t even see the front door, let alone the rest of the house.

Corn stalks were lashed to the pickets of his fence, but they weren’t yellow and green and healthy and wonderful like last year, this year they were blackened husks, their corn cobs shriveled and brown, totally gross. Even the paint on the fence looked old, cracked and faded and peeling. The only thing visible in the yard was the walk up to the front porch. The kids collectively gulped and pushed on the front gate. It wouldn’t budge.

“Huh?” the daring boy who initially tried then tried again, pushing harder, jiggling the latch, checking on the other side for another lock, but the gate looked exactly like it was before, it just wouldn’t open no matter how hard he tried.  

“Move over, let me try,” an older girl ordered, taking over pushing at the gate. Again, it hardly budged, and the kids all groaned with disappointment.

“Hey, look over there!”

One of the green lights bounced up to the fence, twinkling once before exploding into a soft wash of blue light. The larger blue circle pulsed and its light spread, revealing the front steps of the house.

“Hello, children,” a voice spoke from the light, “sorry, but I’m not home at the moment. Knock once on the gate and you will receive your usual treat from me to you, one at a time, please. Hope you have a lovely evening and Happy Halloween!”

The younger kids cheered and the older ones sighed in relief, too self-conscious to show just how excited they were. They all lined up at the gate and knocked once, like Castiel told them to, and before they could even blink their candy bags got heavier in their hands and they eagerly looked inside. Countless brightly colored packages and wrappers filled their bags, a plethora of chocolates and fruit-flavored treats, caramel-nut or candied-apples—depending on preference or if they had allergies, and the gate knew that somehow—and tiny pumpkins, too. As each of them left the gate one of the small balls of green light from the yard bounced after them, making sure to light their way, all the way home.

 

Sam peeked out the window one last time. A few mothers had come around, trying to peer through the gloom at the house, but Cas assured him they wouldn’t be able to see it. Sam had to be sealed inside the house before Cas set the wards because even he wouldn’t have been able to see it after he finished. He still felt a vague tickling sensation behind his eyes from just being so close to the window and he stepped back, rubbing at them. The house would be completely invisible to the naked eye, something Sam had thought up but didn’t even know was possible.

“So was it all worth it?” Sam asked, walking back to the couch. Cas hummed and craned his neck to look up at him.

“Oh, most certainly worth it,” Cas said, pulling another blanket around his shoulders, “the kids get what they want, which is all I cared about, and the parents won’t be able to bug me.”

“Yeah but look at you,” Sam laughed, “you’re falling asleep and it’s not even eight.”

“Not my fault that spell took a lot out of me,” Cas grumbled, “now come here, movie’s about to start.”

Sam sat down beside Cas and let the sleepy witch curl up against his side, yawning though he tried valiantly to hide it. The opening title of _The Thing_ flared on the screen and Sam sighed, settling deeper into the couch. He had a bowl of popcorn and some of Cas’s handmade chocolates by his side, and his witch on the other, already sound asleep. He leaned down and kissed his forehead—Cas barely stirred in his sleep, humming absently and snuggling closer when his leg slipped—and the night couldn’t get any better.

 

The next day the house was back to normal, as bright and clean as ever, no leftover decorations or smoke or anything. The kids who walked past it to the bus stop wondered if last night even happened.

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Halloween!!!   
> All art by yours truly~  
> New chapters of Box Turtle Lane coming soon <3


End file.
